


Todos los bienes del mundo (1598)

by liriaen



Category: 16th & 17th Century CE RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liriaen/pseuds/liriaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even kings must submit to being used by God's will without knowing what it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Todos los bienes del mundo (1598)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madamedarque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamedarque/gifts).



El tiempo lleva los unos,  
a otros fortuna y suerte,  
y al cabo viene la muerte,  
que no nos dexa ningunos.

 

The Escorial is a perfect image of the World. At its core, enthroned in granite majesty, is the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Adjacent buildings wither under its gaze. Columns and courtyards, porticos and passageways are but its servants. They bow and duck officiously, sidling through corridors, flowing down stairwells, spreading order and geometry with every step. Where they stop, they collect themselves and brush down their liveries, meeting the visitor with the stern face of Desornamentado.

You will say there are places more suitable for a palace. Indeed, the slags and tailings of the foothills offer little in the way of distraction. The plains are lashed by a constant barrage of sun, wind, and water, and the bones of the Sierra crack with every frost.

Come September the earth looks dead, as if spring might never come.

But, Doña Isabel, such is the World. It is not made of frivolities. It does not hold with trifles. And it does not whirl around La Gloriana.

***

The girl flies through pink and white blossoms, kicking her skirts. She is everything her dumpy sister is not: a filly, lithe and wilful, red hair flying loose. She gathers speed by leaning back, throwing her weight against the swing, and he thinks he can see a shapely ankle, slender, quite unlike the swollen cabbage stampers Maria calls her legs.

It is August, it is hot, and he is a married man.

She dives into another arc and one of her ladies whoops, most inappropriately.

He shouldn’t look at her, not like this. For does it not say in Leviticus, “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him?” He’s done that before, with Portugal, and look what it got him, a slavering fool for an heir. As for Catalina his great-aunt, had not the Tudors passed her around like a jug, to quench the thirst of brothers? It is not meet, that’s what it is.

When her ladies catch sight of him, up on the balcony, they slow her fun to nudge her. And then his knuckles whiten: there’s no indignant swish of mantillas, no flutter of fans, there’s only her face, narrow, fine-boned, as she turns to look up at him.

She’s laughing. She waves and calls, but his English is not good enough. It could be a mockery; it could be a greeting, so he pulls back lest he lose face.

***

Mass is heard daily, on bad days from a window overlooking the high altar of San Lorenzo. Unimaginable that once I rode and jousted, wearing the costly tooled cuirasses the Helmschmids of Augsburg made for me - what vanity, when a monk’s habit would have done.

Take the Order of Saint Jerome, who walk these halls in silence. Their habits and scapulars free the brothers’ minds, for they allow them to forget their bodies. Their inner lives are rich. I try to follow their example, and yet it pleases God to test me.

You do not approve of such observances, I know. You never said out loud, you wisely kept your counsel, you left your chapel before the host turned into the body of our Saviour, and so by your shrewdness gained the love of your people. But has it ever occurred to you what they have lost, through you?

***

“House arrest seems to suit you,” he says in French, idly plucking little puffs of muslin from his sleeves, “whereas your guard seems to diminish by the day.” He sits perched on a rickety trestle table and swings a grey-stockinged leg, calf brought out favourably by his black-and-gold greguescos. “Master Bedingfield no longer holds the reins, does he?” He laughs, and she offers one of her pretty smiles in return, the kind that crinkles her eyes and brings out her dimples.

“Sir Henry never is anything less than the true master of Woodstock, your Majesty,” she says carefully. Her long-fingered hands keep smoothing down her skirts, the only gesture that could be read as a sign of nervousness.

“Not yours, though.”

“Not mine, your Majesty, even if it please my sister the Queen to appoint him my gaoler.”

“Please,” he says, “we are family: call me Felipe.” Her gown is last year's, he notices, the cut not entirely up to fashion. She does not call him anything, not even brother-in-law.

“Would you like to send to your sister the Queen to assure her of your love and devotion?”

A quick flash of something across her face: anger, irritation? Or waywardness, perhaps, the obstinacy her sister keeps harping on about. Isabel knows that he knows how often she has written - in the most urgent, most tenderly imploring tones. He knows what has happened to those letters, and what fits of the choler they brought about.

“Doña Isabel, if you but eased her Grace’s soul in that matter of Rome-“

“Please,” she says and throws back her hair, “we are family: call me Elizabeth.”

***

That was the year all the gold of El Dorado and the silver of Potosí could not give me an English son. I remember it well, the ridicule, how the ambassadors tittered that Maria’s belly contained nothing but wind. Had I not done my duty by her, to remedy the disorders of her kingdom and to preserve the Low Countries? It was my obligation, you understand.

I made her bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, all for nought - except that her weepiness became too much even for you, who returned to Hatfield, after everything I had done to restore you to favour. You established yourself comfortably, is what I heard in Brussels. That you kept a well-appointed house, a second court even, while your supporters gained momentum.

It would have been impolitic not to cultivate you. And yet, offering you Saboya’s hand was a tactical error: a knight in the Netherlands - as brash and warlike as he was broke - was not what you were looking for.

***

The goblet almost drops from his hand. “A woman's freedom?” He barks a laugh, equal parts mirth and derision. “Have you no sense?” You will not be able to defend this freedom of yours, he wants to say, much less your honour.

She strums a chord on the vihuela he brought her as present, and shrugs. By now he knows that her pout is a feint: sugar dusted on a blade from Toledo. “My sister the Queen is expecting again,” she says. “Should you not be by her Grace’s side?”

“The Queen is in excellent hands,” he says while his gaze follows the intricate patterns on her skirt. Distractedly, his eyes come to rest on her embroidered stomacher. “You should wear green”, he says, “set off with russet, perhaps. It would compliment your hair.”

“I will thank you not to give me advice in the womanly arts.”

“An admirer’s fantasy, then.” He looks up and smiles. “Think of me as a goldsmith, about to set a jewel.”

“Think of me as a jewel, unwilling to shine in someone else’s crown.” She smirks and plucks another chord, her fingers deft and skillful. “Listen, Felipe. Here’s a tune I learnt quite recently. I believe you may know it.”

Juan del Enzina. Oh, and how well he knows it. He closes his eyes, and when she’s done playing he bends forward and kisses her on the mouth. His fingers curl around her nape as she slides closer, her velvet gown a-whisper.

The vihuela makes a disconcerted noise, which she muffles quickly. This is folly and a sin. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things, the Bible says, and is not the Bible universal law? “Universal,” he murmurs against her earlobe and basks in her scent. She smells of something fresh and uncomplicated, like a splash of colour against his now-customary black.

“Stop me,” he says, hesitant all of a sudden, the arrow quivering against her bow.

***

It was a short flight of fancy, was it not, Felipe and Maria, by the Grace of God King and Queen of England, Spain, France, Jerusalem, both the Sicilies and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Burgundy, Milan and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tirol…

When Maria died, I felt a reasonable regret for her death. And then I carried the burden of losing you, too. Not once, not twice, but with every slash of ink you put to paper in the years to come.

Telling Feria you were a heretic and could consequently not marry me! The cheek, Doña Isabel, the cheek.

Night is long in falling, in these plains which I have not seen for months now. Soon the heart of the Escorial will stop beating. Its halls will lie empty, and the crows will descend. But Spain will endure, as an empire on which the sun never sets.

When I made the vow to build these walls, in honour of San Lorenzo and to commemorate my victory over France, everything was possible. It would not have been unthinkable to bring my English bride here, but she never chose to marry. Instead she chose to oppose me every step of the way, and her star has risen to spite me.

I failed to defend the faith in that poor rain-soaked country of yours, so much in need of salvation. Yet the longer I wait for the cool of night, the more I understand that it is impiety, and almost blasphemy to presume to know the will of God. It comes from the sin of pride. Even kings must submit to being used by God's will without knowing what it is. They must never seek to use it.

 

*

 

**Author's Note:**

> Juan del Enzina's "Todos los bienes del mundo" is taken from "Carlos V. - Mille Regretz: La Canción del Emperador" by Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI. Several sentences in the text itself are taken from documents attributed to Felipe and Elizabeth, or to their respective entourages. A fleeting idea was borrowed from Umberto Eco. Thank you, madamedarque, for giving me a stellar opportunity to delve into this particular era and pairing!


End file.
